🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
President Donald Trump defended a misleading campaign advert on Sunday night after Dr. Anthony Fauci complained that the spot had quoted him out of context and without permission.
The commander-in-chief said the advert had used the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director's "own words" as he claimed to have done a "phenomenal" job of handling the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump doubled down on the advert titled "Carefully" after Dr. Fauci told CNN that he had "never publicly endorsed any political candidate" over almost five decades of public service.
"The comments attributed to me without my permission in the GOP campaign ad were taken out of context from a broad statement I made months ago about the efforts of federal public health officials," he said in a statement.
The campaign ad released last week heaped praise on Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing that he had "tackled the virus head-on" over the past several months.
A clip of Dr. Fauci speaking on the Fox News show Life, Liberty and Levin in March appeared toward the end of the advert. In the snippet, the infectious disease expert said: "I can't imagine... that anybody could be doing more."
The context of the advert made it appear as though Fauci was referring to President Trump's efforts to combat coronavirus at the early stages of its outbreak in the U.S. But in the full interview, the NIAID director appears to be speaking about himself and other members of the White House COVID-19 task force.
"I, as one of many people on a team, I'm not the only person, since the beginning when we even recognized what this was, I have been devoting almost full-time on this. I'm down at the White House virtually every day with the Task Force," Fauci said. "I'm connected by phone throughout the day and into the night and I'm talking 12-1-2 in the morning. I'm not the only one. There's a whole group of us that are doing that, it's every single day."
The infectious disease expert then added: "So I can't imagine that under any circumstances that anybody could be doing more."
Newsweek has contacted the Trump 2020 campaign for comment on the advert and Dr. Fauci's complaint. This article will update this article with any response.
The Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh defended the advert on Sunday night, telling NBC News that the campaign spot used "Dr. Fauci's own words."
"The video is from a nationally broadcast television interview in which Dr. Fauci was praising the work of the Trump Administration," Murtaugh told the broadcaster. "The words spoken are accurate, and directly from Dr. Fauci's mouth."
